Unpopular Opinions about Video Games

[The Ugly One]

You are in the top 1% earners on the planet if you're charging $200s an hour for consultation. Normal people can't pay 4 times the cost for everything and keep a positive bank account.

Not really. I just got my garage door fixed. For 1 hour of work, I was charged $200 for labor. The auto mechanic down the street charges $150/hr for labor. Top 1% labor is more like $500-$600 an hour. The really top-shelf lawyers charge over $1000 an hour.

An hour of professional labor should go from $100-$300. $30-$50 is cleaning ladies and waiters. Less than that is a kid cutting my grass.

Living out in the world will teach you the true value of a man's time real fast.

It's easy to say you're rich so you don't care about the cost of things. That doesn't make over paying for stuff make sense. It makes you detached from economics most people have to work with. We have budgets we have to make work and over paying on snacks means we have to cut something else. Over time a small cut becomes a big cut because we're paying twice the amount to view a movie we could be.

Then cut. That $900 GPU or that $150 box of 40k figures wipe out enough of your budget that you can't afford a $4 box of candy at the movies? Then don't buy it. You won't starve.

You're also not "overpaying." A movie theater isn't a grocery store. You pay more at the theater because it costs a lot more to operate a movie theater than a grocery store. It's the same principle behind why a beer that costs $1 at the grocery store is $4 at a bar, or a bottle of wine that costs $15 at the grocery store costs $50 at a restaurant. If you want to pay grocery store prices, sure, fine, but you get the grocery store experience.

 

[Kofi Drinka]

Then cut. That $900 GPU or that $150 box of 40k figures wipe out enough of your budget that you can't afford a $4 box of candy at the movies? Then don't buy it. You won't starve.

Your examples are expensive hobby items for how people should cut their budgets? People have families and $900s on a GPU isn't something they're going to be buying. It's nerd shit for single men with no bills to pay.

If you want to pay grocery store prices, sure, fine, but you get the grocery store experience.

The grocery store experience and the movie experience are the same thing. You're not getting better candy for being over charged. Opening a $1 or $4 bag of candy in a theater doesn't change the taste or experience. It just wastes money.

 

[The Ugly One]

The Robot Chicken argument shows how they navigate copyright law, but that's a legal strategy, not an ethical argument.

Arguments about how to deal with real people in the real world are ethical. You argue about how to deal with people in an ideal, fictional world. That's not ethics. Dealing with real people based on the theoretical ideal world is often unetheical.

Hiring illegal aliens below minimum wage because you think an ideal world has no minimum wage isn't ethical.

Refusing to tip your waiter if you think the ideal world doesn't have tips isn't ethical.

Dumping garbage in the street because you think the government shouldn't run the garbage service isn't ethical.

Refusing to pay someone for a copy of his work because you think that in an ideal world, he'd get paid through some other, unknown means isn't ethical.

Etc.

 

[Brain Power]

Yeah yeah yeah, pirating so very bad x 10383927428, can we change topics now? I'm not reading all those pages full of sperging.

 

[pyrinyx]

Billy The Adult said:
I half agree. For a negative review, I agree. Even "slow burn" stories should be tolerable before the climax, so you can often tell that a game isn't going to be good if it can't bother having a decent intro. However, I think these days due to sheer volume of games that positive reviews need more consideration. After all, so many things can ruin a game that might not be in the first few hours, whether a softlock, grinding, dip in quality, or whatever. I do agree that more people should write reviews, its not hard and can be nice to see peoples' thoughts.

I avoid all positively reviewed games because it is just mountains of people who vaguely gush about the games they've played. They just veer off from the game itself and it turns into mostly a "me, me, me" slog. And it is like they're making the games out to be too perfect than what they really are. And I don't trust them at all. Instead I read negative reviews, at least ones who are coherently written and gets the points across instead of just outright shitting on it and trying to be too witty. It is also from those said negative reviews, I borrow the structuring before I make my own, like converting what they covered and translating them into my own wording.

RPGs in general are the hardest to review because they will require a more lengthier time to review it, that is if you're strictly aiming for story. But if you're just measuring the gameplay, mechanics, visuals .etc then you can just default to your own guidelines.

Bottom line though, it is all about how one writes their reviews.

 

[demicolon]

True, but it doesn't change the ethical question. Whether you crack the DRM yourself or download something that's been cracked by someone else, the act remains the same: instantiating a pattern on your own hardware without depriving anyone else of access, control, or use of any physical thing. If nobody loses anything they had, and nobody obstructs anyone's ability to act, then no property is violated. And without any property violation taking place, the concept of theft cannot possibly apply.

I said already here that it's not theft, at most appropiation. Still, somebody spend their time and money on making the game with the expectation that you will pay for the right to play it. By pirating it, you're getting someone's work for free. Keep writing your Great Text Walls of China, I wonder how will you react if say you translate a book and someone publishes your translation for free on the net. You still have the translation on your HD so you shouldn't mind it.

 

[Kofi Drinka]

I said already here that it's not theft, at most appropiation. Still, somebody spend their time and money on making the game with the expectation that you will pay for the right to play it. By pirating it, you're getting someone's work for free. Keep writing your Great Text Walls of China, I wonder how will you react if say you translate a book and someone publishes your translation for free on the net. You still have the translation on your HD so you shouldn't mind it.

Modern games release in such poor states you shouldn't be buying anything blind. If a company doesn't provide a demo for you to see how it runs and functions then you should pirate every game before you buy it. It's a 2 way relationship and if you keep releasing bad products you shouldn't complain when someone finds a way to test them. Piracy helps generate sales if your product is worth buying.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

I said already here that it's not theft, at most appropiation. Still, somebody spend their time and money on making the game with the expectation that you will pay for the right to play it. By pirating it, you're getting someone's work for free. Keep writing your Great Text Walls of China, I wonder how will you react if say you translate a book and someone publishes your translation for free on the net. You still have the translation on your HD so you shouldn't mind it.

So you're outside of the realm of ethics and into the realm of hypothetical personal attacks
It's funny you mention translating books, because I have published really long translations for free on this very forum

If "exclusive control" were my concern, I would need to keep my ideas to myself and never share them
If money were my concern, I would look into other means of monetization that don't depend on the government kicking in your door and threaten to kill you if you disobey

 

[McMitch]

ITT: people so addicted to goyslop they need to justify to others stealing to feed said addiction.

 

[The greater a'tuin]

I am tired of the papa wolf and cub genre. It limits the mechanics and narrative making the entire game an escort mission for annoying marketable corporate plant characters, as well as ideologically hypocritical from an industry of people that hate parenthood and masculinity. The Mandalorian was a mistake.

 

[The Last Stand]

Keep writing your Great Text Walls of China, I wonder how will you react if say you translate a book and someone publishes your translation for free on the net. You still have the translation on your HD so you shouldn't mind it.

I'd likely be happy that somebody took the time to take my work and translate it for other audiences to enjoy. The publisher may not, but then I would think, "okay, somebody has an interest of my work to translate it to this language, let's work on an official translation." If you're thinking plagiarism, I don't think that could work that way since you're not selling the work as your own.

 

[demicolon]

So you're outside of the realm of ethics and into the realm of hypothetical personal attacks

JFC talking to you is like pulling teeth

If "exclusive control" were my concern, I would need to keep my ideas to myself and never share them
If money were my concern, I would look into other means of monetization that don't depend on the government kicking in your door and threaten to kill you if you disobey

We're talking about products, not ideas and nobody's going to kick your door and shoot you for pirating Call of Duty 53276871254 Modern Whatever. Even in Japan famous for ridiculous copyright laws at most you'll get a fine and a stern talking from the police if it's your first time.
If we're into personal attacks now then know that you are really autistic about this, as if the subject matter personally offended you or was giving you pangs of guilt. Nobody who doesn't feel guilty feels the need to justify his actions to the world to this extent. If you wanna play pilpul then there's @ Catch a Rainbow you can practice Jewish lawyer mind tricks with.

I'd likely be happy that somebody took the time to take my work and translate it for other audiences to enjoy.

I was talking about a scenario where you get royalty for each translated copy sold and before the book gets published someone takes your translation and publishes it for free, therefore cutting your reward for your hard work. Sorry for not being specific.

 

[The Last Stand]

I was talking about a scenario where you get royalty for each translated copy sold and before the book gets published someone takes your translation and publishes it for free, therefore cutting your reward for your hard work. Sorry for not being specific.

You didn't specify if the book was already officially translated or not. That's why I said I would have the sense to think: "okay, let's do an official translation so I could get those royalties." If I have a book and I translate it, I'm not deriving anything from the original work. I'm just making it readable for that language.

 

[Lemmingwiser]

Appreciate the reply. I think it misses an important distinction, however
"Making a copy of the dancer" is not what is happening. A better comparison would be that pirating is like making a perfect copy of a video of the dancer. Not the dancer themselves. Not even their original performance. Just a copy of the file that represents it.
The distinction is important because digital files are not physical performers, they are instruction sets (code, data, patterns). These things can be duplicated without loss. No performance is taken, no access it revoked, nothing is displaced. That's why it's no theft - because there is no conflict over a scarce resource.

It's also worth pointing out that like comedians, dancers blame each other often accurately of stealing moves.

It's not someyhing that lawyers typically get involved with, because the economic value of a dance move is 0$

Yeah yeah yeah, pirating so very bad x 10383927428, can we change topics now? I'm not reading all those pages full of sperging.

Are you saying his opinion is... unpopular?

Guess he wins the thread.

 

[XL xQgg?QcQCaTYDMjqoDnYpG]

It's also worth pointing out that like comedians, dancers blame each other often accurately of stealing moves.

It's not someyhing that lawyers typically get involved with, because the economic value of a dance move is 0$

People are abusing language in a way that words become meaningless
Such as "liberal" (formerly meaning: let's get government out of people's lives) now meaning "government must regulate every aspect of everybody's life at every second"
It's like "stealing a meme"

The "Right mouse button, Save as..." NFT critics were so close to rehabilitating the words "copy" and "steal", but no, they squandered that opportunity

 

[Lemmingwiser]

People are abusing language in a way that words become meaningless
Such as "liberal" (formerly meaning: let's get government out of people's lives) now meaning "government must regulate every aspect of everybody's life at every second"
It's like "stealing a meme"

The "Right mouse button, Save as..." NFT critics were so close to rehabilitating the words "copy" and "steal", but no, they squandered it

I don't even think your issue is with the language. You know the meaning being conveyed, I think. If I sit and program a game all day for two years straight I'm going to feel it's my property. It legally is. Crafting a joke may not take as much, but some ownership is felt. "stealing" can't be meaningfully policed, but if someone really goes overboard like carlos mencia, there is a reckoning after.

Game piracy can't be meaningfully policed either. Because antipiracy is also anticonsumer in 99% of cases.

I don't buy books, I download them. Some of these books no longer have copyright. Some of them were written last year. The writers are off no different if I don't download them if I wouldn't have bought them anyways. But that is a hypothetical that exists purely in my mind. There are games that I thought I would never buy, but then suddenly I have the urge to buy it at some point and I do.

If people never did in the future what they now decide to do, the world would be full of slim and fit people. Many people decide to. Only a few keep it up.

The hypothetical of "I would never buy it" is a fiction, an uncertainty. Wanting to play, or even just try the game, is a desire that the author (or studio or..) monetizes. Many games are only made with this purpose. And by copying it, you are stealing access to something someone else invested into existing in the first place.

I justify all sorts of piracy, as I justify all sorts of stealing. It is stealing, though. I think everybody knows that it's a kind of stealing, even if it's distinct from stealing a loaf of bread.

 

[Scarthew]

I said already here that it's not theft, at most appropiation. Still, somebody spend their time and money on making the game with the expectation that you will pay for the right to play it. By pirating it, you're getting someone's work for free. Keep writing your Great Text Walls of China, I wonder how will you react if say you translate a book and someone publishes your translation for free on the net. You still have the translation on your HD so you shouldn't mind it.

Yea but the people who worked on the game already got paid. The people who profit off sales are only the higher ups. Also if were talking about devs that hate us anyway it is ethical to steal from them.

 

[demicolon]

Yea but the people who worked on the game already got paid. The people who profit off sales are only the higher ups. Also if were talking about devs that hate us anyway it is ethical to steal from them.

That argument would fly if indie games weren't pirated like crazy.
Also cocoa and smartphones are made using literal slave labour, next thing you're gonna tell me is you don't eat chocolate at all and never used a phone in your life?

 

[RandomGibberish]

There are basically two types of pirates:

1. People who were never going to be customers anyway.
2. People who treat it like a demo and end up buying it to support the creators.

Let’s be honest — do you really think someone stealing a Gucci bag could actually afford one or is willing to pay that price?

 

[Calandrino]

You could play it "ironically" for a an hour or two, just to confirm your suspicions and/or play it for real and skip all cutscenes and plot and focus on gameplay. I did the latter that with a few games, such as Horizon: Forbidden West. I don't care about plot in games like this (big budget, open world, long playthrough) and 99% of any woke elements are in cutscenes

Only reason to do that is to make sure you're sending death threats to developers that genuinely deserve it.